Max J. Friedman realized early in life that the world he lived in was very different from what most others his age would ever experience. He was born in Sweden to Sam and Frieda, Polish-Jewish parents who met and married there after their liberation from Bergen-Belsen and then emigrated to the US in 1952.
Max and his sister learned very little from their parents about their parents’ lives before WWII or what they had gone through during the Holocaust, and much of what they did learn from them, it would turn out, did not really happen. What was real were their parents’ years of ghettos, slave labor and concentration camps like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, which Sam and Frieda endured while suffering the horrific loss of their families: spouses, parents, siblings and children.
Max’s family experienced the after-effects that flow from parents who have survived such horrors. When it came time to care for their elderly survivor parents, Max and his sister well understood that they too would have to become survivors. This book is the story of this family’s journey of discovery, transformation and acceptance.
It was a long time coming. After getting a BA from Columbia College and a Master’s of Journalism from UC Berkeley, Max spent the next five decades first as a journalist and then in related writing fields, including public television, leading a communications group for a major pharmaceutical company, and operating his own editorial consultancy. He married and has twin sons and two grandchildren. After spending a career discovering and then sharing the stories of so many others, and more recently completing the memoirs of two complex personalities, he found himself reexamining his own past, spurred by a question from his grandson. The result is Painful Joy, an effort to finally uncover the truth of his parents’ extraordinary journey of survival and the effects it had on others.
Traveling to Poland, Germany, Israel and Sweden, he sought to help restore his parents’ humanity by uncovering who they really were, apart from damaged survivors: where they came from, the lives they once led, their lost hopes and dreams. He learned how all that had unraveled, leaving dual legacies of pain and resilience for future generations. This retelling of what he discovered and what remained hidden was more complicated than he could have imagined. It is a story that goes beyond his own family to explore larger questions about the nature of survival, the tricks our memories can play on us, how hate can destroy and how love can restore. In the process he transforms Sam and Frieda, who start out as strangers, into people who merit our attention, empathy and respect.